**For some reason the top 2 posts uploaded out of order. This was my first day in Frankfurt. And the post below it is the one from today. I am going to add pictures from Heidelberg tomorrow since my picture backup is complete.**

Headed out of Heidelberg after only a day to the business and financial capital of Germany, Frankfurt am Main. (There is another very very small city called Frankfurt an der Oder. Main {pronounced ‘mine’} and Oder are rivers.) Frankfurts on the Main/Oder!  It has several large sky scrapers, though very few compared to the likes of New York. It has a very nice mix of old and modern buildings, not like run down and fading, but the old turn of the century 1800’s European style.

My hotel, called Excelsior is a whopping long walk right across the street from the main trainstation. (Literally less than a minute from the trainstation). It is an older hotel, and the interior shows it, but for the insanely low price, the free internet, free breakfast, tv set, front desk open 24/7, checkout at noon, not to mention free mini-bar with all glass bottles of soda, orange juice, water & free beer it is hard to say no. Though my room faces the noisy station and busy street, the windows block almost all the sound.

The first stop on my order of business was to Frankfurt’s main shopping center, the MyZeil Galerie. And wow was it busy. It is like Black Friday on overdrive.A somewhat big ultra modern mall with really really cool architecture. 5 floors, (1 is underground). Saturn, a huge electronics store chain very very similar to Fry’s and Best Buy, takes up 1 full floor, and large sections of 2 others. I cannot describe the architecture even if I wanted, so check out the pictures. Whoever designed the mall, or whoever was in charg though made 1 very annoying decision. There is an escalator that takes you up and down to the underground floor, no problem. But there are only 2 main escalators…and both lead to the top floor. So if you want to get down you gotta go down through all the floors 1 at a time, so there were always lines to get down since everyone had to go down together.

Next was the Eschenheimer Turm which is quite nearby. On a street corner sits the 450 year old Eschenheimer Turm, a medieval tower structure, now restaurant sits on the edge surrounded by other significantly taller larger structures. The guy said the elevator to the top is closed. Sad face goes here.

After that I headed to a real tower, a sky scraper called the Main Tower, and got really cool views of the city, and other towers. Next I walked around town and crossed the river getting views of the towers in the background. Checked out a large cathedral but it was closed, and just walked along the riverbank until it got dark, which wasn’t really a super long time.

Highlight of the day: There was a fat hairy guy cross dressing as a belly dancer, dancing to some Indian music.